[1][2][3][4] In 1999, it was adapted into a film of the same name by Elizabeth Cuthrell, David Urrutia, and Oren Moverman, directed by Alison Maclean.
The book takes its title from the Velvet Underground song "Heroin",[5] and concerns the exploits of several addicts living in rural America, as they engage in drug use, petty crime, and murder.
The orderly, with whom he takes a drug-fueled, bunny-killing trip, helps to save a man who's been stabbed in the eye by his wife (this character, Georgie, is also the one who reveals the nickname of the narrator).
The book ends on a more hopeful note as the final narrator enters a recovery program and begins to hold down a stable job writing a newsletter for the residents of a nursing home.
In this story, a drug-addicted narrator recounts hitchhiking in four different vehicles, first with a Cherokee, then a salesperson, then a college student, and finally a family composed of a husband, wife, young daughter and a baby.
The salesperson is drunk and shares alcohol and pills with the narrator before leaving him off to find a student who drives him until he catches a ride with the family.
The narrator and his friends Tom and Richard are thrust into the role of reluctant chaperons of a mute man who unexpectedly climbs into their vehicle one evening after a dance.
Upon arriving at the last location they discover that the mute man is an ex high school football star, and now is an addict in the company of wrongdoers.
He spends his time drinking at a bar known as the Vine (a reoccurring setting that the narrator finds himself at in later stories), where the other guests have also spent much of their lives consumed in drug addiction.
He ends the story by reflecting: "I am still alive"[10] which shows that he can't believe that with the state of his addiction, he is continuing with his life.
They go to the bar after selling the scrap and actually feel good about themselves as they did the closest thing to honest work for the first time in their lives.
The story takes place in the span of a single day, but the narrator recounts seeing the belly dancer for the first time and staying in the same bed with her the previous night.
The story ends with the narrator, a recovering drug addict, noting that he is getting a little better every day in the midst of people who he calls "weirdos."
Jesus' Son has enjoyed fulsome praise since its publication in 1992 and is widely recognized as "beloved" and "iconic", as well as having the effect of making the author "deified.
"[14] Meanwhile, Publishers Weekly found that "for the most part the stories are neurasthenic, as though Johnson hopes the shock value of characters fatally overdosing in the presence of lovers and friends will substitute for creativity and hard work from him.
"[15] Andrew Pulver, writing for The Guardian, similarly found that "It's only real weakness is that some of the characterisation is painfully thin—as if heroin chic was applied to the script as well as the art direction—and the junkies are such blank slates, it's hard to summon much empathy for their plight.
"[16] James McManus, in The New York Times, appreciated Johnson's tackling of the subject matter, stating that his prose, here and in other works, "consistently generates imagery of ferocious intensity, much of it shaded with a menacing, even deranged sense of humor.
"[17] Nathan Englander, for NPR, similarly stated: "With dialogue that feels like you're getting it verbatim and stripped-down prose, he writes simple, honest stories that have the bigness of great work.
"[18] According to literary critic Kevin Zambrano, "It's no wonder, twenty-five years [after its publication], Jesus' Son has become a staple of writing workshops across America—its voice is that of a totally free mind, able to say anything."
Unassuming in presentation and readable in one sitting, the book was narrated in a gently self-deprecating, conversational style by a protagonist who, though unnamed, sheepishly lets it be known that people call him "Fuckhead.
"[21]William Giraldi, reflecting on the short story collection in Poets & Writers, stated that "We go to Jesus' Son precisely because in its most sublime moments it reveals to us a condition both lesser and greater than human.
"[22] Author Jim Lewis called Jesus' Son "a small collection of eccentric and addictive short stories … But unlike most books about the dispossessed, they're original and what's more, deliriously beautiful—ravishing, painful; as desolate as Dostoyevsky, as passionate and terrifying as Edgar Allan Poe.
[23]" Acknowledging Johnson's "serious artistic accomplishments", critic Sandy English noted the absence of historical social antecedents in Jesus' Son; Overall, the characters are not engaging, and the life depicted here is not that intriguing.
[26][27] In 1999, the book was adapted into a film of the same name starring Billy Crudup, Samantha Morton, Denis Leary, Jack Black, Dennis Hopper and Holly Hunter.